IBM's tool to tackle crime

Across US, crime and violence are increasing. Increase in violent crime and murders require law enforcement agencies to tackle crime fighting with new tactics. IBM has developed a tool to help law enforcement agencies enable people to do their job, improve officer safety and reduce crime. The police department from Santa Cruz, California to Memphis, Tennessee made use of predictive analytics software from IBM as a way of predetermining where robberies and other crimes are likely to occur, then dispatching officers to those locations as a preventative measure. This concept is similar to a science fiction movie "Minority Report".

The city's police department implementing crime analysis system conducts weekly meetings to identify hot spots of activity, and has invested in technology to improve the "situational awareness" of its force. The predictive analysis software will take those efforts a step further by analyzing past and present crime records and evaluating incident and arrest patterns around the city.

Predictive analytics work for crime prevention, in theory, because crimes such as burglaries tend to occur in patterns--such as a cluster in the same neighborhood or during a certain time period. The goal of the pilot program is to station more officers where crimes are likely to occur. The kind of information used in a crime-fighting predictive analytics system include the types of criminal offenses that are trending, time of day, day of week, and weather conditions.

In Memphis, officials said serious crimes fell 30 percent and violent crimes declined 15 percent since implementing predictive analytics in a program with IBM and the University of Memphis in 2006. The program known as CRUSH — Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History — targeted certain “hot spots” to allow police to deploy more efficiently. John Williams, crime analysis manager for the city’s police, said the system has had a dramatic impact, allowing Memphis to get off the list of worst US cities for crime. “If the data is indicating a hot spot, we are able to immediately deploy resources there. And in a lot of instances we are able to make quality arrests because we’re in the right area at the right time,” he told AFP.

Reference: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/29/police-using-predictive-analytics-to-prevents-crimes-before-they-happen/